Research and teaching material on business models, innovation, and entrepreneurship

Monthly Archives: May 2013

I have begun discussing learning from failure in a previous post this spring – and now I have successfully taught a class during my Introduction to Entrepreneurship course on WebVan, a case of as an impressive failure as they get from the Internet bubble times of the early 2000s.

Similar to Prodigy I discussed in the past, WebVan also erred on the side of too much too early, although its game was over much quicker. Offering users the possibility to do all their grocery shopping online in 1999 was a precursor new business model in the retail industry then, as it still remains so to this day. But WebVan founders did not stop there – they wanted not only to be an online Wal-Mart, but also to combine the capabilities of a Fed-Ex and an Amazon all in one as well. The company managed to convince several investors about its idea feasibility and assembled over $800M in investment from both venture capital and an early IPO in 1999. However, the good fortunes and investor credibility did not last long – by July 2001 the company was bankrupt and had to fire all of its 2 000 employees.

As discussed when teaching this case, several lessons can be learnt from both WebVan’s ambition and the execution thereof. The below video of their distribution center in California gives a more tangible idea about both:

Today, 15 years later, it is still difficult to encounter perfect grocery shopping solutions online, although several companies are experimenting with new business models in this space. One successful model has been pioneered in Sweden, where customers are not only offered their grocery shopping, they receive a full bag of ingredients with cooking instructions for their working week. This model has been penetrating Europe through different shapes and forms, with HelloFresh in the UK or QueRico experimenting in Spain. On much lower scale and with much fewer fixed costs, maybe these models will be more successful where WebVan’s Napoleonian vision failed before?